Considering the damage reported (substantial damage to both the floor around and the ceiling above the body) I wouldn't call it smoldering.
Yet spontaneous combustion... no I don't believe that either. A more likely explanation would be that the person had a lot of clothing on (elderly people are very good at feeling cold and putting on lots and lots of clothing - the person in question was sitting close to a fireplace so good chance he was feeling cold) that happened to be highly combustible and for whatever reason caught fire. Synthetic clothing may burn fast and hot and seriously damage a body, leaving damage on the floor around it and to the ceiling.
Surprising anyway that there are no other, more likely scenarios given than "spontaneous human combustion" as cause of death. Living humans are not exactly flammable to begin with. Our hairs maybe, but that's about it.
And indeed possibly he passed out for whatever reason, fell forward, and a spark jumping from the open fire set him alight. An unlikely scenario sure, but I'd say much more likely than spontaneous combustion.
I was thinking in those lines too. Why go for Linux when you have experience with Windows? And why doing your first-ever Linux deployment for a 2,500 user set-up?
The answer for the first is probably either cost or philosophy. But still I'd start much smaller when talking about a totally unknown system.
Send out two trucks, they both have to get back. With or without container on their trailer. And besides most unloading points don't have the equipment to take a container off a trailer, let alone do the folding. Folding and unfolding will be exclusively done in container yards (either at the dock or inland).
True, a truck can take a bundle. But if you send out two trucks and let one truck carry two folded containers, the second truck has an empty trailer. And still has to go back to the yard.
Besides at the vast majority of container stuffing/unstuffing points they container will not leave the trailer, as the yard simply doesn't have the equipment. They don't need it anyway, they have a loading dock or so instead.
Europe has a shortage of 40'HC containers. Other types are available just fine. No idea why that is really. There are quite some stuck in Hong Kong again awaiting import to China (mainly scrap material loads) but that's also not a spectacularly large number.
Shipping bulk in containers is done already. It's quite normal actually. But the thing is for truly bulk stuff like iron ore, or liquids like oil, it's just impractical. Even plastic granules are shipped in bulk. Foodstuffs like grain and rice too. You have the choice for those of one vessel of about 10,000 tons that you can easily pump (yes, suck it up!) empty, or needing 500 shipping containers to carry the same cargo. With ores the numbers are even more staggering, and you can load containers only half full because otherwise they are too heavy. Wasted space. And that's not just reinforcing the container, but it's too heavy for the trucks/trains.
The beauty of this roof/bottom collapse is that you still retain the stackability and full strength, containers are routinely stacked seven layers high. With an allowed gross weight of about 24 tons for a 20' unit, and about 28 ton for a 40' unit, that's a lot of weight the bottom container has to carry.
And according to the article 2, 3, 4 or 5 can be folded in a single unit. Just don't fold them completely wiht less than 5 units, so at least you have two walls where the outer walls should be.
They will not make too much difference for trucking: a container truck can carry a shipping container, not much else. Not likely that if you send out two trucks that one can take back both empty boxes, and the other something else. There is just not much "something else" to carry.
Difference is made in storage yards: less space taken. And on container vessels: there is much much more volume of cargo going from China to the US and EU than the other way around, and liners routinely ship empty containers all the way back to China. Finished products simply contain much more air than raw materials, one container of raw materials can easily become five containers of finished product.
The unfolding is what bugs me most. The roof has to be pushed up and become level, then someone has to put in those heavy metal bars. And that's high up, a container is about 2m30 tall, so not easy to do. Needs machines again. Though of course this folding/unfolding will usually be done in container yards only, so then special equipment can be installed.
Those contributions are contributed by volunteers by their own initiative, not on request and directed by/. That is probably the big difference. Otherwise all news outlets would have a problem, as many don't pay their sources.
Patents are for hardware stuff. Machines and the like. And they specifically allow for reverse engineering (figuring out how things work), as that advances the general knowledge. Then people inspired by one patented machine may design their own improved machine. With or without other patented bits. Also a patent is designed to be a full disclosure of how a particular machine works: you get your 20 or so years of protection, under condition that you fully disclose how it works. One of the requirements of a patent is that using only the patent a person skilled in the art can build the invention.
Patents, copyright, trademark rights: all great things, and when developed the "founding fathers" got it right. After that copyright terms were extended to unreasonable lengths, and patents got expanded in areas where they do not belong.
What you describe that is marketing. You're probably mixing up marketing with advertising: advertising is a common part of marketing, but there is much more to marketing than advertising.
I don't know about this particular game, but if I understand correctly you have to develop for each console separately. Different hardware platforms. That's a lot of extra work for a small start-up game developer, or for an individual/group doing it in their spare time. Better start with the PC platform - if only because most people have one of those already.
And the games market is definitely bigger than the consoles. If I were a beginning game maker I would target either the mobile phone market, or the desktop PC market. This game will be for the PC market, it sounds too heavy for phones. Now if they are successful in this market, they may have the money to invest in porting the game to other (console) platforms, and they will have the name to have the console makers sign them up.
And rightfully so. No-one is interested in unfinished, poorly executed products. Polish is important. And that includes both graphics, overall game design (story, characters, options) and overall game play.
It's under development and they're hitting mainstream geek-press already (Ars, Slashdot). So a large part of their target market already knows about it.
Developing a game like this shouldn't give you too much hope to get rich. As TFA states they hope to make it "a commercial reality", not sure what they mean with it but it sounds like they hope to have it break even or make a little profit off of it. It's so out of the ordinary that to me it's hard to say what could happen to a project like it.
But to get back to the point: you don't need multi-million budgets for marketing. If you have an interesting product (and they do) then the press will happily write about it, like/. does now. No need to buy advertising on TV or whatever.
But that's exactly what they are accused of. The bickering is over Google ranking its subsidiaries higher than competing services, essentially using their market position as a search engine to gain an edge in other markets.
Do they have a monopoly in search? Their market share is big, many people will argue that they have a monopoly of course, but do they really? When does one qualify for monopoly status?
Think MS and IE. Do you think anyone would use that stinker if it wasn't bundled with the most used OS on the planet?
It was gaining quickly on Netscape before it was bundled already. At the time IE was considered by most to be the better browser, and as such it was gaining market share. Fair enough: let the better browser win. And then indeed MS started to bundle it in Windows. Including calling it an integral component that can not be separated.
Nowadays we have Firefox; back in the day we had Netscape 4.7 trying to compete with IE5.5 and later IE6. Having those proprietary extensions in IE that were used happily by more and more website designers didn't help Netscape much of course. IE6 was when it was released simply the best offering out there.
I think it's just been a stupid move (in hindsight at least) by MS. Without the bundling there still would have been a great chance for IE to kill Netscape. After all most people buy computers with software pre-installed; that includes an OS (usually Windows) and basic utility software such as a browser. Netscape was the one that was added by most, but with IE winning popularity likely the computer builders would have switched to providing IE instead. In effect almost the same as bundling, but without the anti-trust issues.
I don't have the feeling that Google has a >95% market share in advertising. Microsoft has (had) such kind of market share in desktop computer operating systems. That's a big difference.
As long as Google is not abusing search engine market share to muscle in on advertising market share or so, they can't be accused of leveraging a monopoly to gain advantage in another market, like MS did with the IE browser.
In how far they are allowed to exclude certain customers from their advertising offers, I have no idea. But I'd guess that'd only be an issue if they have a monopoly in that market - in that case one could argue that they use an advertising monopoly to gain unfair advantage over certain competitors. Yet I think Google is pretty far from having anything near a monopoly in online advertising.
Massacres and genocide I would not call an honest "mistake" as they're usually done intentionally. Automating the battlefield and particularly the killing machines would only make such actions easier.
You can do this already with Android phones, using the bar code scanner. Maybe not getting as much press, it's a more down-to-earth method, yet it works already.
I've tried this myself once with some DVDs that I got second hand. Scanned the bar code with product number, and within seconds had a list of some online shops selling that product, with prices. You can do the same when you're in a shop of course (all you need is a mobile data connection).
Layar is interesting but has many more uses of course. For example there is a Wikipedia layer, which will give e.g. overlays of major buildings and provide instant information of what you're looking at. Works basically with any entry in WP that has coordinates with it. A major issue holding back Layar is that it uses a lot of data (still expensive - and some people, like me, don't even have a data plan), and as it uses network, GPS, compass, camera and screen all big time, plus putting a serious load on the phone's processor, it drains your battery really fast.
Of course, but liquidating doesn't necessarily means that the business is bankrupt. Businesses close for whatever reason other than bankruptcy (owner retires; landlord raises rents too much; business simply unprofitable but also not loss making). And also in those cases a liquidator is appointed to take care of that.
I'd guess a simple and effective counter measure against that is to have say a hundred monitors present in the same room as the one you try to secure, and have them just showing a screen saver or so. Some that move, others that are mostly static, whatever. Good luck filtering the signal of one monitor out of that!
Close down yes. Bankrupt, not so fast. If they can't survive even weeks without income and have no choice to go bust leaving behind large debt (as is suggested in the article) their business was not financially sound at all. Which in turn may explain why they did not take the safety measures they should have taken.
Worse: according to the second linked article DigiNotar knew about the attacks already at 19 July. That's when they started revoking numerous certificates. Yet they did not notify the public. Also it seems they did not take extra countermeasures, and the measures in place were far from what's considered "good practice" for highly secure sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering the damage reported (substantial damage to both the floor around and the ceiling above the body) I wouldn't call it smoldering.
Yet spontaneous combustion... no I don't believe that either. A more likely explanation would be that the person had a lot of clothing on (elderly people are very good at feeling cold and putting on lots and lots of clothing - the person in question was sitting close to a fireplace so good chance he was feeling cold) that happened to be highly combustible and for whatever reason caught fire. Synthetic clothing may burn fast and hot and seriously damage a body, leaving damage on the floor around it and to the ceiling.
Surprising anyway that there are no other, more likely scenarios given than "spontaneous human combustion" as cause of death. Living humans are not exactly flammable to begin with. Our hairs maybe, but that's about it.
And indeed possibly he passed out for whatever reason, fell forward, and a spark jumping from the open fire set him alight. An unlikely scenario sure, but I'd say much more likely than spontaneous combustion.
I was thinking in those lines too. Why go for Linux when you have experience with Windows? And why doing your first-ever Linux deployment for a 2,500 user set-up?
The answer for the first is probably either cost or philosophy. But still I'd start much smaller when talking about a totally unknown system.
Send out two trucks, they both have to get back. With or without container on their trailer. And besides most unloading points don't have the equipment to take a container off a trailer, let alone do the folding. Folding and unfolding will be exclusively done in container yards (either at the dock or inland).
True, a truck can take a bundle. But if you send out two trucks and let one truck carry two folded containers, the second truck has an empty trailer. And still has to go back to the yard.
Besides at the vast majority of container stuffing/unstuffing points they container will not leave the trailer, as the yard simply doesn't have the equipment. They don't need it anyway, they have a loading dock or so instead.
Europe has a shortage of 40'HC containers. Other types are available just fine. No idea why that is really. There are quite some stuck in Hong Kong again awaiting import to China (mainly scrap material loads) but that's also not a spectacularly large number.
Shipping bulk in containers is done already. It's quite normal actually. But the thing is for truly bulk stuff like iron ore, or liquids like oil, it's just impractical. Even plastic granules are shipped in bulk. Foodstuffs like grain and rice too. You have the choice for those of one vessel of about 10,000 tons that you can easily pump (yes, suck it up!) empty, or needing 500 shipping containers to carry the same cargo. With ores the numbers are even more staggering, and you can load containers only half full because otherwise they are too heavy. Wasted space. And that's not just reinforcing the container, but it's too heavy for the trucks/trains.
The beauty of this roof/bottom collapse is that you still retain the stackability and full strength, containers are routinely stacked seven layers high. With an allowed gross weight of about 24 tons for a 20' unit, and about 28 ton for a 40' unit, that's a lot of weight the bottom container has to carry.
And according to the article 2, 3, 4 or 5 can be folded in a single unit. Just don't fold them completely wiht less than 5 units, so at least you have two walls where the outer walls should be.
The folding/unfolding is what bothers me too.
They will not make too much difference for trucking: a container truck can carry a shipping container, not much else. Not likely that if you send out two trucks that one can take back both empty boxes, and the other something else. There is just not much "something else" to carry.
Difference is made in storage yards: less space taken. And on container vessels: there is much much more volume of cargo going from China to the US and EU than the other way around, and liners routinely ship empty containers all the way back to China. Finished products simply contain much more air than raw materials, one container of raw materials can easily become five containers of finished product.
The unfolding is what bugs me most. The roof has to be pushed up and become level, then someone has to put in those heavy metal bars. And that's high up, a container is about 2m30 tall, so not easy to do. Needs machines again. Though of course this folding/unfolding will usually be done in container yards only, so then special equipment can be installed.
Those contributions are contributed by volunteers by their own initiative, not on request and directed by /. That is probably the big difference. Otherwise all news outlets would have a problem, as many don't pay their sources.
Software is already well protected by copyright.
Patents are for hardware stuff. Machines and the like. And they specifically allow for reverse engineering (figuring out how things work), as that advances the general knowledge. Then people inspired by one patented machine may design their own improved machine. With or without other patented bits. Also a patent is designed to be a full disclosure of how a particular machine works: you get your 20 or so years of protection, under condition that you fully disclose how it works. One of the requirements of a patent is that using only the patent a person skilled in the art can build the invention.
Patents, copyright, trademark rights: all great things, and when developed the "founding fathers" got it right. After that copyright terms were extended to unreasonable lengths, and patents got expanded in areas where they do not belong.
In the computing world I'd call that the Microsoft effect.
What you describe that is marketing. You're probably mixing up marketing with advertising: advertising is a common part of marketing, but there is much more to marketing than advertising.
I don't know about this particular game, but if I understand correctly you have to develop for each console separately. Different hardware platforms. That's a lot of extra work for a small start-up game developer, or for an individual/group doing it in their spare time. Better start with the PC platform - if only because most people have one of those already.
And the games market is definitely bigger than the consoles. If I were a beginning game maker I would target either the mobile phone market, or the desktop PC market. This game will be for the PC market, it sounds too heavy for phones. Now if they are successful in this market, they may have the money to invest in porting the game to other (console) platforms, and they will have the name to have the console makers sign them up.
And rightfully so. No-one is interested in unfinished, poorly executed products. Polish is important. And that includes both graphics, overall game design (story, characters, options) and overall game play.
It's under development and they're hitting mainstream geek-press already (Ars, Slashdot). So a large part of their target market already knows about it.
Developing a game like this shouldn't give you too much hope to get rich. As TFA states they hope to make it "a commercial reality", not sure what they mean with it but it sounds like they hope to have it break even or make a little profit off of it. It's so out of the ordinary that to me it's hard to say what could happen to a project like it.
But to get back to the point: you don't need multi-million budgets for marketing. If you have an interesting product (and they do) then the press will happily write about it, like /. does now. No need to buy advertising on TV or whatever.
Why do you need a publisher these days? Just release it yourself, online!
But that's exactly what they are accused of. The bickering is over Google ranking its subsidiaries higher than competing services, essentially using their market position as a search engine to gain an edge in other markets.
Do they have a monopoly in search? Their market share is big, many people will argue that they have a monopoly of course, but do they really? When does one qualify for monopoly status?
Think MS and IE. Do you think anyone would use that stinker if it wasn't bundled with the most used OS on the planet?
It was gaining quickly on Netscape before it was bundled already. At the time IE was considered by most to be the better browser, and as such it was gaining market share. Fair enough: let the better browser win. And then indeed MS started to bundle it in Windows. Including calling it an integral component that can not be separated.
Nowadays we have Firefox; back in the day we had Netscape 4.7 trying to compete with IE5.5 and later IE6. Having those proprietary extensions in IE that were used happily by more and more website designers didn't help Netscape much of course. IE6 was when it was released simply the best offering out there.
I think it's just been a stupid move (in hindsight at least) by MS. Without the bundling there still would have been a great chance for IE to kill Netscape. After all most people buy computers with software pre-installed; that includes an OS (usually Windows) and basic utility software such as a browser. Netscape was the one that was added by most, but with IE winning popularity likely the computer builders would have switched to providing IE instead. In effect almost the same as bundling, but without the anti-trust issues.
I don't have the feeling that Google has a >95% market share in advertising. Microsoft has (had) such kind of market share in desktop computer operating systems. That's a big difference.
As long as Google is not abusing search engine market share to muscle in on advertising market share or so, they can't be accused of leveraging a monopoly to gain advantage in another market, like MS did with the IE browser.
In how far they are allowed to exclude certain customers from their advertising offers, I have no idea. But I'd guess that'd only be an issue if they have a monopoly in that market - in that case one could argue that they use an advertising monopoly to gain unfair advantage over certain competitors. Yet I think Google is pretty far from having anything near a monopoly in online advertising.
Massacres and genocide I would not call an honest "mistake" as they're usually done intentionally. Automating the battlefield and particularly the killing machines would only make such actions easier.
You can do this already with Android phones, using the bar code scanner. Maybe not getting as much press, it's a more down-to-earth method, yet it works already.
I've tried this myself once with some DVDs that I got second hand. Scanned the bar code with product number, and within seconds had a list of some online shops selling that product, with prices. You can do the same when you're in a shop of course (all you need is a mobile data connection).
Layar is interesting but has many more uses of course. For example there is a Wikipedia layer, which will give e.g. overlays of major buildings and provide instant information of what you're looking at. Works basically with any entry in WP that has coordinates with it. A major issue holding back Layar is that it uses a lot of data (still expensive - and some people, like me, don't even have a data plan), and as it uses network, GPS, compass, camera and screen all big time, plus putting a serious load on the phone's processor, it drains your battery really fast.
Of course, but liquidating doesn't necessarily means that the business is bankrupt. Businesses close for whatever reason other than bankruptcy (owner retires; landlord raises rents too much; business simply unprofitable but also not loss making). And also in those cases a liquidator is appointed to take care of that.
I'd guess a simple and effective counter measure against that is to have say a hundred monitors present in the same room as the one you try to secure, and have them just showing a screen saver or so. Some that move, others that are mostly static, whatever. Good luck filtering the signal of one monitor out of that!
Close down yes. Bankrupt, not so fast. If they can't survive even weeks without income and have no choice to go bust leaving behind large debt (as is suggested in the article) their business was not financially sound at all. Which in turn may explain why they did not take the safety measures they should have taken.
Worse: according to the second linked article DigiNotar knew about the attacks already at 19 July. That's when they started revoking numerous certificates. Yet they did not notify the public. Also it seems they did not take extra countermeasures, and the measures in place were far from what's considered "good practice" for highly secure sites.
What happened to him? Long time no submissions or other news with him mentioned. This is his field.